Using my 2 iCloud accounts on the same Macs & iDevices?

belso wrote:

Is it possible to use ALL iCloud syncing services with "john_smith@icloud.com" AND AT THE SAME TIME use my former Apple ID "family_smith@me.com" for the Mac App Store only?

Welcome to the Apple Community.

Yes you can do that. You may have to manually move your data to the new account (calendars etc), but if you add the account as a secondary account instead (system preferences > mail, contacts & calendars), you could keep everything where it is and just use the email from the second account.

belso wrote:

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I just need to set AppleMail with my new email address ("john_smith@icloud.com") and so on all my Macs and iDevices.

Is that right?

That's right except you want to add it as an iCloud account in system preferences > mail, contacts & calendars instead of via mail, it will set up mail for you without having to bother with other settings.

Note: if so, during the "transition period", I assume I could have both email accounts in AppleMail ("john_smith@icloud.com" and "family_smith@me.com").

Yes that's correct, indeed you can carry on and use them both if you want or turn your first address off in system preferences > iCloud.

Do you have a screenshot of that message or information about where you see it.

I have never seen such a message myself, I have a primary account and 2 secondary accounts in use and have encountered no such messages.

1. As a secondary account doesn't have back up or document syncing features, you are extremely unlikely to ever need the 5 GB you are allocated. I wouldn't have thought this was a problem and if it ever is you can easily make it your primary account temporarily.
2. Turn Mail on in both accounts, this will add both addresses to mail. Select the mail in the first account and drag it to the second. Then uncheck the mail option on your primary account at system preferences > iCloud.
3. I thought you were keeping the first account as a primary account to save you manually moving all your calendars etc to your new account. But yes, even if you remove the first account as your primary account for iCloud, it can still be used for MAS, iTunes etc etc.

So far as I know from the limited number of friends who share photostream albums with me, it appears that the name used for the shared album sharer is taken from their contact card.

If you want to move all your data across to your new account, you can do that (it's easier on the computer) I can show you, just let me know which data you want to transfer.

You should be able to change the address you use for your ID for iTunes, MAS etc

OK, a couple of things before I start. Firstly (and I'm hoping I'm not appearing rude) depending on how well you understand my instructions this may take a while, if this thread gets lost amongst others, please feel free to email me, my address is in my profile. Secondly, I think I may have been wrong about where shared photostreams get the sharers name from, I think it is likely to be the name you set up in your iCloud account.

And thirdly, for the avoidance of doubt, we are changing accounts for iCloud, you can also change accounts for FaceTime and iMessage, but you should continue to use the account you have always used for iTunes and MAS. Finally all the swapping is done on your Mac, we can look at yor mobile devices after.

The first thing to do is swap your accounts so that family becomes your secondary account and JS becomes your primary account, we don't need to do this just yet, I have a couple of questions first, but let me know if you need instruction on swapping these over.

Contacts, calendars, reminders, notes and Safari bookmarks, you don't need to worry about at this stage, but don't swap accounts until we come back to them.

In regard to Photostream, do you have any photos in photostream that you do not have either in your camera roll on your mobile device or in iPhoto events on your Mac.

In regards to documents and data, what applications do you use this feature with.

Back to my Mac will just follow your account, but I'm not sure what localise my Mac is, can you enlighten me.

There also may be some mail that you want to move to your JS account, but we can take care of that too.

OK, judging by the times we are conversing we are in completely different time zones, it's 2.30 in the morning here and I need to retire soon. I wasn't expecting so many types of documents and I haven't heard of many of them, I'm not sure I can guarantee the safe passage of all of them, but I'll sleep on them and get back to you.

We'll start with those documents I'm not sure about, I'm not sure if this will help but it won't do any harm.

• Select the finder, navigate to the go menu and hold down the alt key.
• You should now see a 'Library Folder' in the go menu, click on it
• This should open something like this in a finder window.

• Navigate to the mobile documents folder.
• Select the first none 'com~apple~.....' folder
• Hold down the alt key and drag this to your desktop
• This should copy the folder not move it
• Repeat for each none 'com~apple~.....' folder
• You may wish to put all these into a single folder for tidyness, call it something appropriate.

We don't copy the Apple folders, since we will take care of them a different way.

• Now open Pages.
• Select 'Open' from the file menu.
• Drag any documents in the iCloud window to the desktop.
• You may want to put them in a single folder for tidyness, call it something appropriate.
• Repeat for Numbers.
• If you have any other 'com~apple~.....' folders in your mobile documents folder (ignoring mail, Notes, shoebox, system~spotlight and textInput) repeat as for Pages above using the appropriate application. In my case you will see I have Keynote, TextEdit and Preview documents in the cloud. ASK if you aren't sure.

We are now ready to swap accounts. (Don't worry if you aren't presented with all the options I describe below).

• Open system preferences > iCloud and uncheck each of the boxes one by one
• When you uncheck contacts, if you are offered an option, choose 'Keep contacts'
• When you uncheck Calendars & Reminders, choose 'Delete'
• When you uncheck Notes, choose 'Delete'
• When you uncheck Photostream, choose 'Turn Off....'
• When you uncheck Documents and Data, choose 'Delete'
• After everything is unchecked, sign out

• Now sign in again using your JC account details.
• Check each box one by one.
• If you are offered the option to merge at any time, chose merge

At this stage you should now have your JC mail account set up in Mail and your contacts in your contact application. Your calendars, Reminders and notes should all be empty. However if you could check this and let me know if it is any different before we move on. Please also let me know if you see anything that you think you shouldn't.